Getting out

Up until a couple of weeks ago, my attempts to get out and do anything fun this year hadn't been going so well, I had probably only gone to, at best, four different places through the end of June -- then July showed up (as it often does), and I went ahead and equaled my outings, up until that point, by going to four more places during a stretch of about two weeks.

Part of the problem is, and it's been well documented here on the blog, that I'm just not very much of a people person, and on top of that, large crowds often cause me to have unhealthy levels of anxiety, which not surprisingly... is something that I try to avoid.

It also doesn't help that I am, by nature, a homebody -- a trait, which has only increased ten-fold since moving to my current location almost five years ago. It doesn't matter what time of year it is, there will almost always be something that needs to, or can be, done outside around here. And since I enjoy being outside, so more often than not, if it's not somewhere that I have to go (work, grocery store, etc.), 99.9 times out of a hundred, I'm going to end up staying home. Going to places that sell cards/comics/videos is fun, but at this point in my life I get more enjoyment out of fresh air and exercise, so as mentioned, it's usually going to win the day.

There are however a few places that I really do enjoy going to, and will actually make an effort to try and get to at least a couple of times a year, one of those being, McKay's.

I have written about McKay's on few separate occasions, so if you haven't seen those, and don't know what McKay's is, you can probably just put it into the search bar at the top of the screen and find my previous posts. For those that have forgotten, or are just not interested in reading a bunch of old posts, McKay's is a giant bookstore that sells oh so much more than just books, we're talking DVD's, action figures, comic books, CD's, records, video games, etc. -- basically a geek paradise.

I've been telling myself for months now that one of these days I would be making a trip to Knoxville, and McKay's would be one of the stops, well, the stars seemed to have aligned a few weeks ago, and I actually got out and did something!

McKay's was the primary reason for going to Knoxville, but I knew that if I had any extra time I would want to go somewhere else as well, that somewhere else ended up being Red Rhino Cash Advance (pawn shop turned collectibles store), which will be covered in the next post.

Even though I was making a rare trip out, I still had to be very mindful of how much money was spent, thankfully though, I've got quite a bit of store credit for McKay's, so I didn't have to worry about spending any money there, it was just Red Rhino that I'd have to try to watch out for.

It's been quite awhile since I've opened a post in such a rambly manner, but you'll all probably be happy to hear that I think I'm running out of momentum here, so I should probably hurry up and get to the goodies!

The first stop for me is always the giant wall o' action figures, which used to have sealed, and unsealed figures on it. Now their getting so many that this wall is used just for the sealed stuff, and the unsealed stuff has been moved to a couple of other spots in the store.

Part of the fun of this wall, at least for me, is that you never know what you're going to see. I mean usually it's anything from early 90's SLU's to the latest designer toys, and everything in between. Somebody must've brought in their Star Wars collection (POTF and Episode 1), because there was an awful lot of those to be had. Plenty of Spawn and ToyBiz Marvel, as well as a bunch of newer things that were very foreign to me.

Amongst the offerings this time were a few figures from Funko's ReAction line, the cheapest of which was, Lightning, from BTILC. I own all of the Predator line, half of the Universal Monsters, and have quite a few others on my mental wantlist, but somehow, I never knew that they did a BTILC series, so this was my first time seeing one -- and at $5.95, I couldn't grab it off the peg quick enough!


Sorry about the glare

Now that I know they exist, I want them all! eBay doesn't look like a very good place to get these right now, so hopefully I can find some more cheap examples during future outings.

After the wall o' sealed figures, my next action is to turn around (literally) and hit up the ginormous section of cheap DVD's and Blu-Ray's, this is all of the stuff that is $1.95 or less, and because of the sheer quantity, is where I usually end up spending most of my time while there.

I had absolutely no interest in seeing this when it came out, but over the years, for reasons that are unbeknownst to me, I have developed a want to give it a try -- the problem has been, trying to find a cheap copy! I've been operating under the assumption that I'm not going to like it, so I didn't want to pay too much for it just in case my assumption is correct. I'm happy to say that in this instance my thriftiness has paid off, as this copy only set me back $0.95, which in my mind isn't too much to pay for something that I might like, I mean it would've cost more than that to rent it, provided of course there were still places to rent physical copies of movies.

Both of these films are in the public domain, as such they are readily available, usually in the form of those 10-50 movie multi-packs. Despite owning quite a few of said multi-packs, I somehow don't have either of these... all it took was $0.25 to rectify this first world problem of mine.

Live action superhero movies rarely do anything for me. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part I just can't get past the CGI, it's usually so distractingly bad that I'm just not able to suspend my disbelief. With that being said, it should come as no surprise to hear that I'm one of the select few who hasn't gone gaga for the series of Marvel Universe films. For my money, if you want a solid superhero film, you have to look towards the animated features that DC (and a few from Marvel) has been putting out for almost two decades now. Now I'm not saying that they're all good, but an impressively large percentage of them are, and in my mind the MU stuff couldn't even carry the jock of most of these animated pictures. [Side note: would this be considered a hot take?]

This was the first time that I had seen any of the animated stuff in the cheap bins, and while it's not in the upper echelon of the DC features, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse is still worth seeing, and is still worth the $1.95 that I paid for it (with credit), heck, the Batman/Darkseid exchange (it's probably on YouTube) is worth the $1.95 alone.

Jeepers Creepers is another movie that I had no interest in when it came out, but a few years ago I saw a video on YouTube that talked about (and showed) the opening sequence, and how it duplicated, nearly shot-for-shot, a story (one that I remember quite well) from Unsolved Mysteries, ever since then I've kind of wanted to see it. I've come across more than a few rough looking copies on video, but since it wasn't a high priority, there was no need to chance it with something that might not work. I'm glad I waited, because on this particular day I had the option of getting 1 and 2 separately, each for $1.95, or I could get 1 and 2 together for $1.95, obviously you can see which route I went .

Just bought, and watched, this earlier this year. At the time I mentioned that I hadn't seen it since it first came out on video, and that was a less than ideal experience, as I was at a friend's house, and his dad talked through the entire movie (he was great guy, but that was a terribly annoying habit). The re-watching went well, although it was kind of amazing how much of it that I hadn't remembered. The tape I bought worked great, so I had no plans to upgrade (reference intended), but for $0.95 it was kind of hard not to.

During my 20+ years of ordering things from Edward R. Hamilton, I've only had a problem with an item in the order on two occasions, the most recent being about five years ago when I got a wonked up two-disc special edition of Hulk vs.

As per policy, they replaced it with no questions asked, the only problem was that the second ended up being screwy too -- as was the third one that they replaced #2 with. Evidently they had just gotten a bad batch/case (it happens). I did get my money back, but I was still left wanting the DVD, especially since I was, with some difficulty, able to watch the defective discs, and I really liked what I had seen. I knew that eventually I would get another copy, I just didn't think it would take so long to do so. Totally worth the wait though! For anyone who hasn't seen it, I would very much recommend the Hulk vs. Thor short, as it's, in my opinion, the best animated film that Marvel has released to date.

This was the best find of the day! The Seven-Ups is another film that I would highly recommend, especially if you're into crime dramas. I had seen this movie more than a few times over the years, but had never owned it, if only because I had never come across a copy in the wild... until now!

That marks the end of the bargain stuff. I did "splurge" on one other item though:

For as long as I can remember I've had a quirk (some might refer to it as an annoying trait) that won't allow me to start watching show from anywhere other than the very beginning. So it when it comes to new shows, if I'm not right on top of them, and don't start watching them from the pilot, it can often be years, or decades, before I get around to going back and giving them a go -- no matter how interesting they look. Such was the case with My Name is Earl. I didn't start paying attention to it until I saw some of the promos during the second or third season, and while it did look like something that I might like, I had that quirk to deal with, so I wasn't able to just jump right in like most folks would've, I instead had to wait. Fast forwarding to a couple of months ago finds me finally getting around to watching the pilot episode on YouTube to see if I'd like it, which I did, and since I'm of the physical media sort, I knew that it wouldn't be long before I purchased the first season. McKay's price of $4.95 was the best that I've seen, so that's where I got it.

Haul wise, I think I did pretty well, certainly well enough to justify the drive.

As mentioned in the opening, I also went to Red Rhino, even found a few things, things that I didn't expect to find (spoiler: it was cards), but more on that in the next post...


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